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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25766668">Demonstrated Behaviour</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope'>Nope</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Torchwood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2006-11-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2006-11-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 05:56:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>717</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25766668</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack does his job.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Demonstrated Behaviour</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They pick up chronal distortions on a Sontaran device Jack spent six months obsessing over. That's not where it begins, but it's how it starts. Torchwood are go.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>The target hits Owen with the atomiser -- physically, the null field is still in operation -- which makes a damn good club. Jack lunges. The man plucks the gun out of Gwen's hesitant hand, shoots Toshiko's laptop with it, sidesteps Jack all in the same movement, boots him one and runs. Gwen hesitates. Jack yells "Go!" She does, sprinting, Owen behind.</p>
<p>"Null field's down!" Toshiko yells.</p>
<p>"Don't tell him that!" Owen yells back.</p>
<p>Except they round the corner and he's gone. Just some kid in the street who shrugs, says he didn't see anyone.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Toshiko and Gwen have been shagging on and off for two weeks. Gwen's having boyfriend troubles. Jack knows this because he watches people.</p>
<p>Owen is saying, "maybe he blew himself up."</p>
<p>"In two seconds? He'd barely melt."</p>
<p>The atomiser is home built, local parts. Nothing alien.</p>
<p>Gwen says "He moved like he already knew what we were going to do."</p>
<p>Anticipation's easy when you know the future. Easier, anyway.</p>
<p>Toshiko finds a fingerprint. It's the kid's. Damn.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>"I din't touch nuffin'," the kid mumble-growls.</p>
<p>"Tommy," says Gwen, human, empathy, soft focus, "you're not in trouble, we just need to know what you saw."</p>
<p>Tommy is adamant. Owen rages. "Your fingerprints're on the gun you bloody oik!"</p>
<p>Owen hasn't got laid in weeks. Lost his date-rape spray. Jack doesn't care either way, though. It's just sex. Or the lack of it.</p>
<p>Kid scans clean. Not shapeshifting. No camo-field. Dead end.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Target returns. Gwen swears this one's younger. Sharing technology? Multiple targets? But he moves the same, vanishes the same.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>Target appears. Disappears. Appears. Disappears. Always near the kid.</p>
<p>"Stalker?" suggests Owen. "Future biographer?"</p>
<p>"Maybe it's all Tommy," Gwen says. "The ghost machine -- what if he could do that physically?"</p>
<p>TARDIS, Jack thinks, and goes off by himself to stare at a hand.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>They stick Tommy in a holding cell. It's all very Guantanamo Bay. Except with temporal bafflers. They don't work.</p>
<p>"We searched him," Gwen insists. "Cavities and all."</p>
<p>Still: Tommy go bye-bye.</p>
<p>"He's got to be drawing power," Jack tells them, thinking of blue boxes and recharging. "Can we trace it?"</p>
<p>They can.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>It's a warehouse. It's a lab. Toshiko actually squees. Gwen laughs. Owen says "Quad Erat Demonstrandum" and points at the QED scrawled on the side of a glowing box.</p>
<p>"A bit pretentious," says Gwen.</p>
<p>"The guy's a genius," says Toshiko.</p>
<p>"No." The target's, there, right there. "Found plans. Tried. The QED fails. Mustn't touch. Have to stop." He flickers like a broken TV signal. "Bouncing. Stop. The QED. Tom" And gone, middle of a word and gone.</p>
<p>"That was pretty fucking creepy right there," Owen says. "Toshiko can carry the box."</p>
<p>Ianto brings containment gear.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>"I've no idea what the QED device does," Toshiko admits. "I can't get inside it to look."</p>
<p>"Maybe you just need the right PIN number," Gwen says, examining the keypad.</p>
<p>"The right PIN," Toshiko says and, off Gwen's look, "Personal Identification Number. PIN number is redundant."</p>
<p>"The QED," Jack says. They stare. "Like PIN. QE-Device. Quantum Entanglement. It's a teleporter. Only it didn't work properly. He's scattered himself in time, not space. He's lost his anchor."</p>
<p>Chronal anomaly. That wasn't supposed to happen. But it did. It does. It will do. For Tommy. For Jack. 51st century. 20th. 2000th. 21st. All those times he's been. And the ones he doesn't remember (and what if what he doesn't remember is this and he too is just looping round)? Everything found is lost again.</p>
<p>"But which is his present?" Gwen asks. "Can't we stop him touching it?"</p>
<p>"It already happened," Jack says. "Tommy vanished from our cells. Kid Tommy, not the grown up version. It's already happened. Once it's done, you can't undo it. You'd rip a hole in time. Everything would break. Everything."</p>
<p>("elp me," Tommy says, "oh god, please, help me, I'm lost, I'm lost, I'm")</p>
<p>"There's nothing we can do," Jack says. "You can't go back again."</p>
<p>But, god, he wants to. More than anything.</p>
<p>#</p>
<p>He locks the QED away, sits at his desk and does his job, under the watchful fingers of the Doctor's discarded hand.</p>
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